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March 2013

March 29, 2013

I think I've mentioned before that I'm having trouble getting out to see cows these days, since my dog isn't very cow friendly. But it occurred to me that I've got thousands of unused cow photos, right here on my computer, that will never be seen unless I expose their pixels to the world via Friday Cow Blogging, Nostalgia Edition.

We all like nostalgia, don't we? Otherwise why is the whole world watching Downton Abbey? It's certainly not for the longlived characters.

I found a batch of cow photos I took during a walk in the Cotswolds, with our previous cow-friendly dog. We walked right through this herd of cows, and she didn't give them a second look. She was good like that.

They lived (I'm pretty sure they don't live anymore, since cows rival Downton Abbey characters for longevity) in a pretty pasture near Minster Lovell, the prettiest spot in the Cotswolds.

We were following a walk that took us around Minster Lovell and the charming River Windrush, and which ended in cow drama. I wrote about that back then, when the moment was fresh. In all my years rambling around cows, it's the only time I've ever been in a situation that could have earned me the bleeding lead on Radio 4's Six O'Clock News: "Ramblers killed by cows," Eddie Mair would have intoned at the top of the hour.

Looking at the photos of these lovely cows brings back more pleasant memories of that day. It was a particularly hot day in a particularly hot summer. We haven't seen the likes of it since. We're currently shivering in a record cold "Spring".

March 27, 2013

I'd never seen Macbeth performed before last night, which might account for my surprise when I realized just how Scottish, and, well, brutish the play is.

This version, set in the year 2063, stars James McAvoy as Macbeth, and many other Scottish actors as well. I'd never really realized James McAvoy was so Scottish, either. Years ago I saw him play the boyfriend of Jane Austen (played by Anne Hathaway) in Becoming Jane. He seemed more Irish as Tom Lefroy. But he's Glaswegian through and through. There's no faking that accent.

The thing with Shakespeare, at least for me, is that it always takes a few minutes for my ears to adjust to the Elizabethan dialogue. The rhythm, the dialect, the sentence construction, is alien to modern ears. But by the end of the play my mind deciphers it with no problem. It's like being plunged into a room full of French speakers when you don't have a good grasp of the language. This time that adjustment period was confounded by the Scottish accents, and in the opening scene, with the three Witches, even more by the fact they were wearing gas masks. I didn't catch a word they said, or rather, prophesied.

But these were all top notch actors, and as I learned later, they'd rehearsed the play using paraphrased modern language, in order to get the meaning behind the words. I don't know how common that is for Shakespearean actors, but it seems like a good idea. The meaning of the words was conveyed by the actors in ways that went beyond language, and the inflections they added to the lines were what makes seeing Shakespeare in the theatre a completely different experience than reading the dry words on paper.

We happened to be there on the same day that James McAvoy was nominated for an Olivier Award. He deserves it. His Macbeth spit, vomited, bled, and raged upon the stage for two and a half hours in a performance that must have required quite a bit of stamina. It's hard to imagine someone doing that six nights a week, plus two matinees. Especially not without going hoarse.

The audience wasn't so lucky: A quartet of coughers punctuated the dialogue with jarring effect in the intimate theatre. I can't blame them; no one can control a cough, but it was unfortunate when it happened during the quiet interludes on stage. (I did notice that after the interval the coughing stopped. I also smelled wine from the cougher nearby. Apparently wine is an effective cough suppressant.)

The industrial set and tatty Army surplus costumes were perfect for the dystopian atmosphere called for in this post-modern, climate-change affected Scotland. In the program notes, we learn that Scotland has been especially hard hit by global warming, afflicted with endless rain that made coastal cities and flood plains uninhabitable. Food is scarce; enemies plentiful. It's an environment in which anyone who tells the citizens they'll take care of their enemies is immediately annointed leader, or even king.

Macbeth, spurred on by his Lady (played by Claire Foy, of Little Dorrit fame) as well as the profecies of the Witches, is increasingly willing to kill those he perceives to be his enemies. I don't know what they used for blood, but I kept wondering how they washed it off between scenes. There was a lot of it. Not even the tap installed in the front of the stage was enough to wash it from Lady Macbeth's hands.

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!"

Speaking of blood, I've never seen a performance where actors were murdered on stage. It's quite disconcerting, especially when Lady Macduff was strangled. Her death throes were disturbing, as were the cries of her child soon after. No one under fourteen should see this play.

Macduff was played by Jamie Ballard, who I'd seen before in Emperor and Galilean. While he wasn't on stage for much of the play, having hotfooted it to England during the reign of increasing terror, his performance as Macduff was heartbreaking. When he's told of his family's demise, his grief is wrenching. And it's entirely appropriate that he's the one who brings the out-of-control Macbeth to justice, at the hands of a man not born to a woman. (We all knew that was coming, right?)

I won't spoil the brutal, gruesome ending—let's just say I was happy to see the entire cast take a bow with all body parts intact. Again, seeing a tragedy like Macbeth performed is quite a different experience from seeing a comedy. But it's still an experience that's moving and awe inspiring, not simply for the timelessness of Shakespeare's stories but for the incredible talent that engulfs the stage, echoing to the very rafters: The "sound and fury" indeed.

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

March 24, 2013

When Sparky wants another dog to ignore him, he turns his back and pretends to be looking into the trees. Most dogs get the message, but some are as clueless as their owners.

I had to yell at some guy in The Camp today when a Dalmation wouldn't get out of Sparky's face. After yelling for the owner to call his dog, I walked over and told him to enroll in a recall workshop. He had no idea why he needed to, even though his dog was busy ignoring him when he yelled "Murphy!" Murphy had found a young cocker spaniel to play with, and the two of them kept trying to get Sparky (who we'd put on a lead) to join in. Sparky, of course, has no desire (or know-how) to play with other dogs, so when they got too close he barked at them in an effort to make them go away. Probably my attempts to move the dogs out of the way was riling him up even more, since he thought he needed to help me out.

Anyway, after arguing with the guy, and explaining to him that we try really hard to keep Sparky from reacting like that and his dog being in his face didn't help matters, he told me that it simply wasn't a problem if Sparky went after his dog. It would teach Murphy a lesson, he told me.

The problem is, Murphy was just as likely—even more so, in my opinion—to "teach a lesson" to Sparky. Sparky's a 'fraidy cat. He's never escalated into bite mode; as soon as a dog looks at him funny he runs crying in the opposite direction. It wasn't likely that he was going to teach this bold Dalmation a lesson.

When I was trying to get Murphy's attention, I knew I was dealing with a dog who wasn't going to back down. He wanted a good sniff of Sparky, and he was determined to get it, regardless of the frantic barking he was hearing.

But the owner had no clue. He was convinced his dog was just being "friendly" and when I told him he needed to teach his dog some manners he probably wrote me off as a stupid American (insert slander here)—well, I've been called worse.

So we kept Sparky on the leash (he was perfectly happy to be close to us) and went around the Camp until we found a space clear of ill-mannered dogs.

The Camp has become as bad as a dog park in the States, all because so many owners think it's fine for their dogs to run up to other dogs, head on, and try to engage them in play. It's a shame that we can't enjoy our time there without having to be on guard, unlike in other places where dogs generally go on their way without running up to every dog they meet. There's something about a semi-enclosed space, even one that's several acres wide, that makes dogs and their owners think nothing of interrupting their ramble to have some one-on-one action with other dogs and their owners. They just get too bored there, walking around in giant circles.

As we left, I decided I should print out Suzanne Clothier's excellent article "He just wants to say hi" and place it on the cars parked there. I've often wondered how I could get other people to realize that their "friendly" dogs aren't so friendly—to other dogs. What looks like friendliness to us is extreme rudeness to a dog, especially to a dog who's busy telling the other dog in no uncertain terms that he'd like them to stay away.

Sigh. I'll probably never do it, and besides, we have other issues to work on with Sparky. Like his behavior in the car. We've planned a trip to Devon, and we hope to take him with us, but only if we can keep him calm in the car. I firmly believe in the power of positive training to work miricles, but so far we haven't had any success; if anything, the problem is getting worse. So I'm calling the vet next week to talk about medication.

I'll post an update, for those of you who tune in to read about Sparky's progress...I know this blog has gone from being an eclectic, niche-free blog to being The Life and Times of Sparky, but this is my world right now. Well, that and my latest book. I think my next book will feature a dog's point of view.

Because I've got a great understanding of that, now that I've learned to hear what Sparky is trying so hard to say.